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After a week of laying out on the beach and pure gluttony, I was feeling a bit “heavy”. However, I love cake way too much to consider a diet. I thought making these vegan cupcakes were “kinda” healthy and the next best thing to a diet :P They turned out great!

Using a mixer, cream the Earth Balance and sugar until pale and creamy.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flax meal and warm water and let sit until the mixture thickens.

In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, matcha powder, and salt (unless the Earth Balance is already salty).

Add the flax meal mixture to the butter mixture and mix until incorporated.

Alternate adding the flour mixture and the almond milk until all ingredients are incorporated.

Divide among cupcake liners and bake for 15-20 minutes if you’re baking mini-cupcakes, or 25-30 minutes if you’e baking regular sized cupcakes. Poke a toothpick or a cake tester into the cupcakes and if it comes out clean, the cupcakes are done.

Let cupcakes cool on a wire rack.

To make the buttercream, cream the vegetable shortening, icing sugar, and coconut milk together and beat until fluffy. Transfer to a piping bag and pipe onto cupcakes.

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1. Practice French for 1 hour a week: Fail. I’m just sooo… lazy. Lol. I’m actually very close to signing up for a French conversation class. I do, however, listen to the French radio station while I’m washing the dishes ;)

2. Make videos: Pass. I posted one video and I’m about to post another one! Yippee!

3. Write down one good thing every day: Pass. This one is an easy one.

5. Drive only 2 times a week: Sort of pass? I only drove 8 times this month. I drove 3 times in one week but I compensated by only driving once another week.This took a lot of thought and planning. We’ll see how difficult it is for future months. I think a more realistic resolution would be drive less than 10 times a month.

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I very much wanted to wear the “minimalist” running shoes because they look cute. However, my body begs to differ. It likes shoes with cushion (like my go to shoe, the New Balance 890) and socks.

I’ve tried a gazillion socks for running. I’ve tried the socks that are especially designed for running that are way over priced (like Teko), but the ones I really like are the cheap ones you can get at Walmart, or Target.

As my priority is to look cute while I run, I first tried the expensive running socks. Look how pretty they are:

But, they were too thin, gave me blisters, and I put holes in them way too fast. Plus, like I mentioned before, my body likes to wear cushion-y things. It’s probably a blessing in disguise because these were $15 a pop.

So, I’ve settled (and now quite enjoy) my 6 for $8 discount box store athletic socks. With that price, if I run a hole through them, no biggie. I like the thickness of them and I’ve never gotten blisters wearing them. Just goes to show that we don’t always need top of the line gear… even if I’m just talking about socks.

However, what I do think you need to spend some money on are compression socks. I have these bad boys (2XU performance run socks – $55):

I actually don’t wear these to run. I wear them right after a super long run as part of my recovery. I’ve noticed that after a really long run I don’t sleep well because I get “restless legs” and these helped a lot! And… they’re cute.